First Presbyterian Church USA

Riverside Presbyterian Church USA

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Every pastor would like to have the kind of response to a sermon that Peter had on the Day of Pentecost. Three thousand people were added to the church after Peter had finished. Even more importantly, three thousand people had their lives profoundly changed. For most of them it was a change that would make them a pariah in their community and even in their own family. Some would go on to die for their faith. Their faith was no surface affair. It involved a complete commitment to the work of God.

There’s a tombstone in Scotland on which are carved these words about a man named Angus McDonald: “He wasn’t a particularly religious man, but in all other respects he was an ideal churchman.”

How do you do that—be an ideal churchman without being particularly religious? I’m not sure exactly, but I suspect that could be said of many who fill the pews of Chirstendom.

You’re familiar with the famous Leaning Tower of Pisa. It leans almost twenty feet out of perpendicular. Somehow, when the architect was planning that tower he designed a tower that reached a height of 179 feet but had only a ten foot foundation. No wonder it leans!

To me, the tower of Pisa is like a person who’s “not particularly religious, but in all other respects an ideal churchman.” He or she has an inadequate foundation.

Notice how the three thousand who heard Simon Peter that day responded to his preaching. They came to Peter and the rest of the apostles and asked, “Brothers, what shall we do?”

This is a critical point in their lives. Will they be “ideal churchmen, but not particularly religious?” Will they have a tiny foundation under a tall structure? “Brothers,” they ask. What shall we do?”

Notice what Peter tells them to do, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

Did you catch the sequence? “Repent… Be baptized… Receive the spirit.” These concrete steps constitute a proper response to the good news of Jesus Christ. These are the essentials of a vital faith.

Let’s begin with repentance. This is a word that will fall on many deaf ears. Not many people nowadays want to hear about repentance.

I appreciate what former San Francisco Giants manager Dave Bristol once said. His team was in the middle of a terrible losing streak. Bristol said to them, “There will be two buses leaving the hotel for the ball park tomorrow. The 2:00 o’clock bus will be for those of you who need a little extra work. The empty bus will be leaving at 5:00 o’clock.” In other words he was saying, everybody needs a little extra work.

That’s true of us as well. There are many of us who feel that repentance is for others. We’re like the six-year-old girl who said to her mother, “The number one problem in the United States is climate change. I read that in my Weekly Reader. Everybody,” she continued, “knows that the number one problem in the United States is climate change—everybody but our preacher. He thinks that it is sin. I feel that is just because he’s a preacher.”

Could I say that if there’s a man-made component to a heating earth, sin is definitely a part of that? God has made us stewards of this earth, but we haven’t taken care of our environment. So it is with nearly every problem on earth. Sin is involved… and the sad thing is that most of us don’t want to acknowledge our need of repentance.

April 30, 2017

A Most Successful Sermon

Psalm 116:1-4, 12-19; Acts 2:14a, 36-41

Every pastor would like to have the kind of response to a sermon that Peter had on the Day of Pentecost. Three thousand people were added to the church after Peter had finished. Even more importantly, three thousand people had their lives profoundly changed. For most of them it was a change that would make them a pariah in their community and even in their own family. Some would go on to die for their faith. Their faith was no surface affair. It involved a complete commitment to the work of God.

There’s a tombstone in Scotland on which are carved these words about a man named Angus McDonald: “He wasn’t a particularly religious man, but in all other respects he was an ideal churchman.”

How do you do that—be an ideal churchman without being particularly religious? I’m not sure exactly, but I suspect that could be said of many who fill the pews of Chirstendom.

You’re familiar with the famous Leaning Tower of Pisa. It leans almost twenty feet out of perpendicular. Somehow, when the architect was planning that tower he designed a tower that reached a height of 179 feet but had only a ten foot foundation. No wonder it leans!

To me, the tower of Pisa is like a person who’s “not particularly religious, but in all other respects an ideal churchman.” He or she has an inadequate foundation.

Notice how the three thousand who heard Simon Peter that day responded to his preaching. They came to Peter and the rest of the apostles and asked, “Brothers, what shall we do?”

This is a critical point in their lives. Will they be “ideal churchmen, but not particularly religious?” Will they have a tiny foundation under a tall structure? “Brothers,” they ask. What shall we do?”

Notice what Peter tells them to do, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

Did you catch the sequence? “Repent… Be baptized… Receive the spirit.” These concrete steps constitute a proper response to the good news of Jesus Christ. These are the essentials of a vital faith.

Let’s begin with repentance. This is a word that will fall on many deaf ears. Not many people nowadays want to hear about repentance.

I appreciate what former San Francisco Giants manager Dave Bristol once said. His team was in the middle of a terrible losing streak. Bristol said to them, “There will be two buses leaving the hotel for the ball park tomorrow. The 2:00 o’clock bus will be for those of you who need a little extra work. The empty bus will be leaving at 5:00 o’clock.” In other words he was saying, everybody needs a little extra work.

That’s true of us as well. There are many of us who feel that repentance is for others. We’re like the six-year-old girl who said to her mother, “The number one problem in the United States is climate change. I read that in my Weekly Reader. Everybody,” she continued, “knows that the number one problem in the United States is climate change—everybody but our preacher. He thinks that it is sin. I feel that is just because he’s a preacher.”

Could I say that if there’s a man-made component to a heating earth, sin is definitely a part of that? God has made us stewards of this earth, but we haven’t taken care of our environment. So it is with nearly every problem on earth. Sin is involved… and the sad thing is that most of us don’t want to acknowledge our need of repentance.

Even more disturbing are the many people who flaunt their lack of moral discipline. They advertise their flaws on bumper stickers and provide a daily fodder for Hollywood gossip columnists.

I believe it was Tallulah Bankhead who once said, “My heart is as pure as the driven slush.” I don’t know about Miss Bankhead’s personal life, but there are many people who smirk at the idea of repentance.

Every pastor knows that in counseling very few people express regret for their sins. Many are sorry that they were caught, but few are willing to admit they have done something wrong. And yet, as we look at the torment in our society today, the wreckage of home and family life, the destruction of persons by alcohol and drugs, the scandals that have come from our highest echelons of business and government, we’re led to believe that repentance is indeed a universal need.

I read recently about the death of an enormous tree in Colorado. It was such a large, old tree that some experts believe it was probably a seedling when Columbus discovered America. It was only half-grown when the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. Close study reveals the tree was struck by lightning some fourteen times.

However, lightning didn’t destroy that tree. Cold Colorado winters didn’t destroy it. Age didn’t destroy it. Avalanches didn’t cause it to budge. Fire didn’t bring its final demise. No, according to the news report, this enormous tree was finally overcome by beetles. Little bugs so small that anyone could crush them between finger and thumb.And yet these little unobserved beetles brought down this mighty Colorado tree.

That’s a parable of our lives. As Solomon once noted, it is the little foxes that eat the vines (Song of Solomon 2:15).

The late Norman Vincent Peale wasn’t a judgmental pastor. He was known, of course, for his “power of positive thinking.”

I was interested to read about an interview which he had with a very prominent New York City businessman. The businessman came into Dr. Peale’s office and laid out a tragic tale of confusion, frustration, and misplaced values. He painted a dark picture indeed. When he finished describing his misspent life, he asked Dr. Peale, “What do you think I should do?”

Dr. Peale said, “Well, I have a solution for you. It is simple and you are a very sophisticated and intelligent man. I doubt that you would want to hear it.”

The man said, “I think I would like to hear it.”

Then Dr. Peale said, “No, I don’t believe you would. It is too simple.”

Again the man responded, “I want you to tell me.”

Dr. Peale said one more time, “I really don’t think you want to hear it.”

After a while the man became angry. “Look,” he said, “tell me what your answer is.”

Dr. Peale answered like this, “What I really think you need to do is to get down on your knees and tell God that you are a sinner and ask God to forgive you and change you.”

That wasn’t what that man wanted to hear, but it is what many of us need to hear about our lives.

The second step in Christian faith is to be baptized in the name of Jesus. For those of us who have already been baptized, Peter might say to us that our great need is to reaffirm our baptism daily. We’ve already had the water applied at some time in our lives, but we continually need to be re-baptized within. We continually need to take that step of faith daily that says, “I come with my sinfulness and shame and I yield myself to Christ. I ask him to cleanse me and to help me to be born anew in faith.”

A great tragedy for many of us who have been baptized and who are pretty good church people, is that we have been only partially baptized. We haven’t allowed Christ to rule supreme over all of our lives. That’s why we’re continually in need of this reaffirmation.

Robert Lobert once wrote a little booklet titled “My Heart, Christ’s Home.” In this booklet he describes a disbeliever as someone for whom Christ is on the outside knocking, and waiting to enter.

He also tells about one kind of believer who has allowed Christ into his house, but who has offered him only the chair in the hallway. There the Lord sits dressed in his overcoat, holding his hat in his hand. He sits waiting minutes, then hours, days and even years to have access to the rest of the house. Meanwhile the host carries on business as usual while Christ sits out in the hallway.

You get the picture. The baptism that you and I need is a baptism of the whole person—all of our attitudes, all of our actions, all of our dreams and all of our desires. Christian faith is more than a “just inside the hallway experience.”

You may know the story of Constantine, the Roman Emperor who became a Christian. Having taken this step, he wanted everybody else to become a Christian as well. He took his soldiers out into the river to have them baptized.

As they were baptized, however, he had them hold their right arms out of the water. He wanted them to become Christians, but he didn’t want them to become so Christian they would quit killing people with their swords.

Is that the kind of baptism that characterizes your life? Has something been held out? Do you need to make a reaffirmation of your faith? Do you need to allow Christ access to more of your life than you’ve been permitting him in the past? Repent of your sins. Reaffirm your faith.

Finally, Peter says to the new believers, receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

There was a young lady who worked in an enormous factory, one of the largest factories of its kind in the world. One day she confided to her pastor that she would have to quit.

“What’s the matter?” he asked her. “Doesn’t the factory have enough orders to keep you going?”

“No,” she replied, “It’s not that. They have more orders than they can fill, but they haven’t got enough electricity to keep all of the machines going at once, and my machine has to lay idle part of the week. I lose so much time and pay. The trouble is they have more machinery than power.”

That can happen to us—more machinery than power. We need power if we are to deal with our lives so that we’re kept in the way that leads to life. We need power—power to make the changes necessary for us to be all God created us to be.

Tom Harris, the famous psychiatrist, who wrote that enormously successful book, I’m O.K., You’re O.K. says there are three reasons why people change. First, people change when it’s more painful to remain as they are than to change.

Perhaps you’re in a job that’s very painful to you. You can’t imagine being in that job for the rest of your life. So, you make a change. Why? Because it’s more painful to stay where you are than to change.

A second reason for change, according to Harris, is when we find ourselves at the point of despair. Perhaps we suddenly come to the realization that we’re about to lose our marriage, our job, our health. At that point we may change. You’ve heard people say, “I had to reach rock bottom before I could take hold of my life.”

Harris believes there’s a third motive for change, however. He calls it the “Eureka Stage.” That is, some people change because they discover—much to their surprise—there’s something better they’ve been missing. Of course, this is the message of the Gospel. There’s a richer, fuller life that’s available to all who will receive it.

Those who heard Peter preach his great sermon knew they had found something that would make their lives more joyous, more purposeful, and more livable. “Eureka!” This is it. “What shall we do?” they asked.

“Repent,” Peter answered. “Be baptized. Receive the Holy Spirit.” You and I need to take each of those steps daily in our Christian walk. They’re the key to a life that is full, rich and eternal.

Let us pray. Elusive God, companion on the way, you walk behind, beside, beyond; you catch us unawares. Break through the disillusionment and despair clouding our vision, that with wide-eyed wonder, we may find our way and journey on as messengers of your good news. Amen.

April 23, 2017

Learning to Doubt Our Doubts

Acts 2:22-32; John 20:19-31

A tourist, for the first time in his life, had carefully planned a vacation trip to the Grand Canyon. Finally the time arrived, they packed the car, and the family took off. It was the culmination of a dream vacation they had wished for, and now it was reality. On the way they discussed what they would do, the sights they would see, and the fun they would have at the Grand Canyon. This was the father’s dream. He told his family about how he would like nothing more than to walk some of the rim and take pictures looking right into the canyon itself.

Finally they arrived and checked in to a motel, and rushed out to the canyon to begin their vacation. The first thing the father did was to make his way along the rim, but he lost his footing and plunged over the side, clawing and clutching frantically to save himself.

After he fell out of sight and just before he fell into space, he encountered a shrubby type of bush which he desperately grabbed with both hands. Now he was hanging in mid-air, feet and body dangling over the edge, with nothing beneath him. He looked down to see the canyon floor hundreds of feet below. He was filled with terror! What would he do now? His family had been left behind at the lookout and were too far away to hear his cry for help. Talk about a tough situation!

Filled with fear, he looked up and called out towards the empty heavens, “Is there anyone up there?”

A calm, powerful voice came out of the sky, “Yes, there is.”

The tourist, feeling just a bit better since he’d received an answer, pleaded, “Can you help me? Please, can you help me?”

The calm voice replied, “Yes, I probably can. What’s your problem?”

“I fell over this cliff and I’m dangling in space holding on to a bush that’s about to let go. Please help me,” he again pleaded.

The voice from above said, “I’ll try. Do you believe?”

“Yes, yes, I believe!”

“Do you have faith?”

Yes, YES. I have a very strong faith!”

The calm voice said, “Well, in that case, simply let loose of the bush and everything will turn out fine.”

There was a pause then he yelled, “Is there anyone else up there?”

Certainty is very difficult to attain in this world. There always seems to be room for doubt. However, doubt can be disheartening. So some wise people have taken doubt to its logical conclusion and begun to doubt their doubts. And they’ve found their way to a most satisfying life.

Such a man was the author Robert Louis Stevenson. Like many young people in his early years Stevenson rebelled against his upbringing. He was raised in Scotland in a very strict Calvinist home. As a college student he quickly shed his rigid upbringing, which he called “the deadliest gag and wet blanket that can be laid on a man,” and adopted a thoroughly bohemian lifestyle. He called himself a “youthful atheist.”

As he became older, however, Robert Louis Stevenson began to have “doubts about his doubts.” He came to see that for all its claim to wisdom, the world had no satisfying answers to the deepest questions of life. Later Stevenson would write, “There is a God who is manifest for those who care to look for him.”

In the later years of his life Stevenson was a man of deep and profound faith. Toward the end of his life he described his religious outlook as a “Cast iron faith.”

Our Scripture lesson from John’s Gospel is about the world’s most famous doubter. You already know his name.

The news of Jesus’ resurrection spread quickly among his disciples. You can imagine the quickened pulse and the rapid, excited speech of those who had encountered the risen Christ as they shared their experience with others. You can also imagine the difficulty those who heard their story had in believing them.

The first recipients of the good news of Easter were his male disciples and, typically, they considered it the idle nonsense of distraught and hysterical women and didn’t believe it. But as more and more of the disciples and followers of Jesus encounter the risen Christ the stories gained credibility.

The most famous holdout was a disciple named Thomas, also called the Twin. “Unless I see the print of the nails in his hands,” said Thomas, “and place my fingers in the prints of the nails, and unless I can put my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

Many of us have had times in our lives when we could identify with Thomas. We too have rebelled. We too have doubted. Here’s something you need to know: Doubt is one of the most important tools that God uses to produce mighty men and women of faith.

I worry about someone who says to me, “I have never doubted for one moment my faith in God.” My friend, are you alive? Do you have a brain? Do you ever use it? I’m convinced that God has deliberately placed many obstacles to faith in our world. If He meant for us to walk with utter certainty, why does He not reveal Himself more clearly?

Woody Allen once said that he would have no difficulty believing in God. All God would have to do would be to deposit $1 million in a secret Swiss bank account in Woody’s name.

We might not go that far, but it’s a good question why God doesn’t give us an understandable answer to such questions as why bad things happen to good people? It would be so much easier to believe then. And why didn’t God give us a guidebook that’s not open to as many diverse interpretations as the Bible? Why doesn’t He just speak to us in a clear voice at the close of the service and reveal Himself so that, like those early disciples, we could leave here and tell our friends, “I have seen the Lord.”

It seems clear to me that God intends for us to struggle with the great questions of life. It may be that such a struggle is essential to a strong, mature faith. Never to have doubted is never to have taken the walk of faith seriously.

Let me use an analogy from the world of commercial fishing.

Years ago seafood companies had a perplexing problem with the shipment of codfish to consumers who lived inland.

Shippers discovered that frozen codfish loses its flavor in the shipping process. Shipping live codfish is no better. In the holding tanks they become soft and mushy and later tasteless.

So somebody came up with the idea of throwing in some catfish into each of the tanks of live cod. Catfish and codfish are natural enemies. In a quest for survival, the codfish are kept in constant motion as they seek to escape the catfish. Thereby these cod are kept in peak condition from the ocean to your dinner table.

In a sense, doubt and frustration and other such obstacles are the catfish that God has placed in our tank to keep us swimming, to keep us at our best. There’s far more hope for the honest doubter than for the person who says, “Of course, I believe,” and never really struggles with the meaning and the misery of life.

That wonderful writer Frederick Buechner, put it this way, “Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith; they keep faith alive and moving.” Doubt is one of God’s most effective tools for producing mighty men and women of faith.

However, in order to experience the true joy that God intends for each of His children, there must come a time when we begin to doubt our doubts. Doubting our faith is easy, but doubting our doubts is far more profitable.

In Pilgrim’s Progress there’s a character named Mr. Ready-to-Halt. Mr. Ready-to-Halt was so hung up on his doubts that he went all the way to the Celestial City on crutches. He got there but it was a torturous journey with very little joy.

Much of the doubt that we experience in young adulthood is a need to rebel against our upbringing. Again, I suspect this is part of the plan of God. If parents and children didn’t disagree on something, offspring would never leave home.

Jesus didn’t condemn the prodigal for leaving. All of us must do it sometime. That’s part of the maturation process. However, one lesson that we learn from the prodigal is that we don’t want to spend a lifetime in a pigpen either. Spiritual maturity comes when we’re ready to doubt our doubts.

J.Wallace Hamilton once told a story about a Russian girl who was brought up as an atheist. She had taken a government examination and, like all students, was worried about some of the answers she had given.

One particular question on the exam had bothered her. The question was this: “What is the inscription on the Samarian Wall?”

She had written the prescribed answer: “Religion is the opiate of the people.”

This, of course, was the famous anti-religion declaration of the author of Communism, Karl Marx. But the girl wasn’t sure of her answer, so she walked seven miles to the Samarian Wall to check it out and, sure enough, there it was: “Religion is the opiate of the people.”

Greatly relieved, she forgot for a moment her upbringing, and exclaimed, “Thank God! I had it right.”

Well, there are times when even an atheist must thank somebody!

Communist governments, whether in Russia or China or Cuba or anywhere else on earth, have discovered after generations of propaganda that it’s very difficult to purge people of their belief in God. There’s something within the human heart that’s ever reaching outward and upward. There’s something within our very nature that senses an incompleteness to life.

We see through the glass darkly, but somehow we sense the room into which we’re seeking to peer isn’t empty. This world is far too wonderful to have occurred by chance. There’s within us a hunger that only a relationship with the Divine can satisfy. It’s very difficult for most of us not to “doubt our doubts.”

But there’s a final thing to be said. Christian faith can only be analyzed from the inside. Here’s where those who have made a god of the scientific method are going to have a problem. You can’t find God with the most powerful telescope ever built. You can’t find God with a slide rule, or a test tube or an enormous computer. There’s only one way to find God and that’s to take a step of faith, entrust your life to Him, and enter into a daily walk with Him as Savior and Lord of your life. I can’t prove to you the existence of God, but you can prove Him to yourself.

Let’s use an analogy. Could I prove to you that love exists? A scientist could attach electrodes to the skin of a person in love and measure the pulse, the respiration and the blood pressure of a person in the presence of their beloved. But that wouldn’t prove love. Too much caffeine that morning at breakfast might cause the same bodily reactions.

The only way you and I can ever prove love is to have experienced what it is to love and to be loved.

So it is with faith. There are only two ways the existence of a loving God can be proved. The first is by the testimony of others. We can say with utter certainty there have been millions of persons who have experienced God as a reality in their lives. That’s one proof—though it won’t satisfy the skeptic.

The most conclusive evidence of the existence of God is to experience Him yourself. As the Old song says, “You ask me how I know he lives, he lives within my heart.”

The richest man in the world, Croesus, once asked the wisest man in the world, Thales, “What is God?”

The philosopher asked for a day in which to deliberate, and then for another, and then for another, and another, and another—and at length confessed that he was not able to answer, that the longer he deliberated, the more difficult it was for him to frame an answer.

Tertullian, the early Church Father, eagerly seized upon this incident and said it was an example of the world’s ignorance of God outside of Christ. “There,” he exclaimed, “is the wisest man in the world, and he cannot tell you who God is. But the most ignorant [workman] among the Christians knows God, and is able to make him known unto others.”

Tertullian was making this very point. Christian faith must be experienced from the inside. Faith grows as you walk daily with the Master. It’s unlikely that Thomas the doubter would ever have experienced the faith if he hadn’t remained among the other believers. And his sense of loss would’ve been profound. He would never have experienced the joy and the relief he experienced when he fell to his knees at the feet of Jesus and exclaimed, “My Lord and my God!”

What happened to Thomas after his experience with the risen Christ? His later career is wrapped in mystery and legend. An apocryphal book, called The Legend of Thomas, claims to give his history. It says that when the disciples divided up the world to conquer it for Jesus, Thomas received India. And there in India Thomas died for the faith that he once had doubted.

Indeed, in South India today you will find a church called the Thomist Church of South India which claims that Thomas was its founder. Thomas dropped his doubts at the pierced feet of Jesus and became one of those by whose testimony we have the faith today.

Thomas was a doubter. He had to see for himself. Jesus didn’t condemn him for that. However, Jesus did say, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.” Doubt is an obstacle that, when overcome, can cause us to have a deeper, richer, more meaningful faith. In the struggle for meaning the wise person learns to doubt their doubts. The way to prove faith is to surrender yourself to the Lordship of Christ, walk in his way and experience his love for yourself.

Let us pray. Blessed are you, O God of our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom we receive the legacy of a living hope, born again not only from his death but also from his resurrection. May we who have received forgiveness of sins through the Holy Spirit live to set others free, until, at length, we enter the inheritance that’s imperishable and unfading, where Christ lives and reigns with you and the same Spirit. Amen.

Sunday, April 16, 2017

Where Is Your Galilee?

Acts 10:34-43; Matthew 28:1-10 CEB

Let’s pause for a moment – before we get to earthquakes and the angel and, yes, even the very-much-alive-Jesus, and consider Mary Magdalene and the other Mary.

I want to give them some attention, in part, because they’re the characters in this Gospel story that are relatable. I can’t imagine too readily the heavenly being in dazzling white. I don’t know how to picture the Risen Christ. But I know the Marys. I know the faithful men and women who are inevitably around before the crack of dawn or available in the dead of night, no matter how dire the circumstances. I know the ones who perform like clockwork the rituals surrounding death even when they’re deeply grieving the one for whom those rituals are performed.

They’re the ones who cook the meals and make the fellowship hall look lovely for the reception that follows the service. They’re the ones who usher the family into the parlor as they gather at the church, making sure boxes of tissues are strategically placed and bottled water is available. They’re the ones who sit by the bedside, visit in the hospital, place phone calls, write notes and pray without ceasing. I know Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, don’t you?

What’s it about them that keeps them showing up, even in the most heartbreaking of seasons, even when their own hearts are broken? Like the Marys in this morning’s Matthew text, it’s surely this: They love Jesus. They love Jesus and their love for him compels them to face death head-on, even when most of the rest of us are so consumed with hopelessness that we can’t get up as the day dawns. We simply can’t face what the light of the morning reveals, so we don’t go to the tomb or the hospital, the refugee camp or the prison. But the Marys do – even though their hearts are broken at the magnitude of the suffering and loss they’ve witnessed.

Jesus is dead and buried. They saw him on the cross. Matthew tells us, “Many women were also there, looking on from a distance; They followed Jesus from Galilee and had provided for him. Among them were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee.” They knew where he was buried. Matthew tells us, “Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were there, sitting opposite the tomb.” They keep showing up, despite the pain and loss, because they love Jesus.

On this Easter of 2017, remembering the Marys and their relentless showing up for the love of Jesus is no small thing. I can’t relate too much to angels and earthquakes – or even, at times, to the Risen Jesus – but I know many, many Marys and I can relate to them. On good days, I may even be able to emulate them and show up in those graveyards of despair, if only for the love of Jesus. That, it would seem, is the first step to encountering our Risen Lord.

Odd isn’t it? How those places we least want to go are often the ones where we encounter not only heavenly beings, but our Risen Lord? Odd isn’t it? That it’s often in places of pain where Jesus undeniably meets us? Maybe even when we visit the prisoner, give food to the hungry, clothe the naked… sounds familiar, no?

I appreciate Matthew’s version of the resurrection for including the Marys, ordinary people of faith who love Jesus, and for also having a showy angel who seems to throw down an earthquake in order to roll away the stone. Heaven and earth are full of God’s glory in this account. Even stones can’t help but obey the God of all creation. But really, the angel and the earthquake are a warm-up act to the Risen Christ who meets the Marys on the road to Galilee. The timing of this is important. The Marys have already believed and obeyed. They took the angel's message to heart and are on their way in joy and fear to tell the disciples, and suddenly Jesus meets them. Maybe there’s an Easter Word in that, too. Sometimes it’s in acting out of the hope of the resurrection, before we’ve even seen the Risen Christ, that our Lord suddenly meets us.

Don’t be afraid. For the love of Jesus, keep showing up, even in grief, even in places of pervasive pain. Act out of the hope of resurrection and, lo and behold, all of the sudden, the Risen Christ Jesus will meet you, confirming that death doesn’t have the last word, life does. In the truth of that promise we keep showing up before dawn, in the middle of the night, and even when everyone else has given up.

Could that be our Easter message this year? Because of the resurrection we live bravely, persistently – and, many would say, foolishly – out of love for and loyalty to Jesus, going to Galilee because he told us he would meet us there.

As Michael Curry, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church often admonishes his flock: “Go to Galilee.” He asks, “Where is your Galilee?” He says:

Galilee.

Which is a way of talking about the world.

Galilee.

In the streets of the city.

Galilee.

In our rural communities.

Galilee in our hospitals.

Galilee in our office places.

Galilee where God’s children live and dwell there.

In Galilee you will meet the living Christ for He has already gone ahead of

you.

I think we sometimes want a more complicated Easter message that that. The angel in dazzling white, the earth shaking, the stone rolling away – all of that’s appealing in its other-worldly extraordinariness. When we don’t have that kind of epiphany we can fake the ignorance of God’s will and calling on our life. But the most amazing part of this story is the Risen Christ, the one through whom death and sin has been vanquished, and his message is the same as that of the angel: “Go to Galilee.” It’s pretty straightforward. Will we be like the Marys and heed it? Will we show up in the painful, chaotic, all-to-earthly Galilee for the love of Jesus and in hope of the resurrection? Fear not. Our Risen, life-filled, life-giving, Lord will meet us there.

Let us pray. Resurrecting God, you conquered death and opened the gates of life everlasting. In the power of the Holy Spirit, raise us with Christ that we, too, may proclaim healing and peace to the nations. Amen.